The other day my buddy Tah Phrum Duh Bush posed a question on his Facebook page. He wanted to know “What would give you incentive to buy my music... Please be honest and even brutal if you need to be. What would inspire you to make a purchase?”

I considered the question for a while, and then I thought about the most recent album I purchased, what inspired me to buy it, and how those reasons could be used by Tah, and other artists, to sell albums.

The last album I purchased was Taylor Swift's Red (you all know I love pop music, and Taylor Swift is awesome). The reasoning that went into this purchase was three-fold.

First, I really like the music. There’s a maturity to Red that wasn’t in her previous work, and the production is incredible. I knew this because...

I heard a complete stream of the album on YouTube. OK, it probably wasn’t a legal posting, but I’m sure she doesn’t care since the result was a sale. Hearing the compete album made me realize I liked more than just a few songs, and that the entire listening experience was a good one. Of course, there are lots of albums that are good listening experiences, many of which I have earmarked on Spotify so I can listen to a few songs from them whenever I want. When it comes to Red, however...

It's not available to be streamed track by track on Spotify. Crazy, right? Everyone’s telling artists they have to be on Spotify so people can hear them, but had Red been on Spotify it might not be in my album collection today. There are other albums on my Amazon Wish List right now, but by virtue or not being able to stream individual songs, yet still having heard the entire album, I chose to purchase Red. I still want those other albums, but I don’t feel as though it’s as necessary to buy them. This is the double edged sword of Spotify, and similar services. Sure, artists get the streaming revenue, however small, or large, that may be, but what amount of album sales, and revenue from that, are they losing out on?

To wrap this up semi-succinctly, what inspires me to purchase an album is the music being good, and having the opportunity to listen to the entire thing, but not being able to choose individual tracks. That way, if I like what I hear I HAVE to buy the album to spin the individual tracks whenever I want.

That’s what inspires me to purchase an album, but I will now pose Tah’s question to you - what inspires you to purchase an album?

-artist is indie-just like what you said about spotify, if i know the album won't be available like that, i'll usually purchase it but the music has to be on that 'gotta hace it' status-giveaways like t-shirts or promo items never hurt, inspired most of my old hiphopsite.com purchases